Stephen Totilo

Numerous recent retrospectives showed that, from 2000-2009, video games changed. But how did you change alongside the games of the 00's? I've compiled My Gaming Decade. You go next.

2000: A year removed from grad school, I bought The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, which would prove to be my favorite game ever.

2001: I attended my first E3, getting my first try at Pikimin, my first look at Halo and my first and only instance of being weighed down on a Los Angeles street corner with overstuffed press-kit-filled GameCube/Xbox/PS2 backpacks. Gave one of them away on the spot to some eager swag hunters. On the other side of September 11 and brief unemployment, I bought a purple GameCube. The guys who reserved ahead of me got black.

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2002: Broke a streak of owning only Nintendo consoles that had started post-Odyssey-2 with an NES, then a SNES, then a Nintendo 64 and GameCube. Got myself a PlayStation 2. Also got my first handheld, one of those barely viewable original Game Boy Advances. This was probably the year my then-wife-to-be realized the guy she had started dating was very much into video games. She was there for the purchase of the GBA.

2003: Decided VH1 was the career road on which I wanted to travel forever (not a hard decision) and tried for the first time in two years, to write an article or two about video games… resulting in a GameSpy feature and a string of columns for IGN, the former for pay the latter for, well, glory? Visited Rockstar NYC for the first time to see Grand Theft Auto San Andreas, watching a concept reel that introduced the flavor of the game via a montage of movie and TV clips. Then watched CJ bike through virtual L.A. Got an Xbox.

2005: Finished at VH1. Finished freelancing about video games. Got a Dragon Age reference in the Times. Started covering them for MTV News. Went to Blizzcon and interviewed a wheelchair-bound woman about her thrill of being able to use stairs, virtually, in World of Warcraft.

2006 : Went to Tokyo for the first time, met Tomonobu Itagaki, who became the first and only game developer to interrupt my questions to tell me I had the "eyes of a gambler." Also bought Mother 3 with Tim Rogers and got engaged (not to Tim.) Coped with my wife-to-be's summer in the Congo as any man would: By logging 64 hours, 51 minutes and 29 seconds on Suikoden V before finishing it, the most time I'd spend playing through a game in the decade. Names the 10 Most Influential Gamers Of All Time.

2008: Reached the final big decision in Fable II, but paused the game to watch Barack Obama win the Presidency. With euphoria around me in Brooklyn (people were cheering and dancing in the street all night), I still went to bed missing my virtual dog.